North Carolina’s insurance commissioner says the White House hasn’t responded, three weeks after he urged the president to reject a pardon for twice-convicted insurance entrepreneur Greg Lindberg, according to Insurance Journal.
In a letter to President Donald Trump, Commissioner Mike Causey argued Lindberg’s conduct went far beyond technical violations. He described it as deliberate and sustained, aimed at corrupting a state regulatory system designed to protect the public, and to enrich one person.
Mr. Lindberg’s criminal conduct was not incidental, technical, or victimless. It was deliberate, sustained, and directly aimed at corrupting a state regulatory system charged with protecting the public in order to enrich himself
Mike Causey, Insurance Commissioner
Causey’s view carries weight. He wore a wire, recorded a conversation, and that evidence helped secure Lindberg’s bribery conviction in 2020 and again after a retrial in 2024.
According to the North Carolina Department of Insurance, both US senators from the state, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, agree a pardon would be a mistake.
Until recently, a pardon wasn’t top of mind for most state officials. That changed as Trump issued pardons at a rapid pace, clearing convictions for a former Illinois governor, a former Tennessee state senator, a Virginia sheriff convicted of taking bribes, the former president of Honduras convicted of drug trafficking, and even a co-defendant tied to Lindberg’s case. The pattern shifted expectations.
Lindberg, once a major Republican donor and a reported billionaire, has fought his criminal cases and insurance entanglements in court for years.
He’s also pushed hard outside the courtroom. In October, news reports said he hired Trump’s former bodyguard to lobby for a pardon. The message wasn’t subtle.
Trump has blamed what he calls partisan overreach by his predecessor’s Justice Department for more than 1,600 convictions and arrests he has reversed since returning to office. Causey, a Republican and former insurance agent, rejects that framing in Lindberg’s case.
He said the prosecutions rested on recorded evidence, financial records, and testimony that held up in federal court.
In his letter, Causey wrote that the proof wasn’t speculative. Investigators documented it as it happened, prosecutors built it piece by piece, and juries convicted.
The evidence presented was not speculative. It was contemporaneously recorded, exhaustively investigated, and ultimately proven in federal court.
He said Lindberg tried to undermine regulatory oversight, dodge accountability, and intimidate officials tasked with protecting policyholders, retirees, and working families.
“Mr. Lindberg’s actions were a calculated attempt to undermine regulatory oversight, evade accountability, and silence those whose duty it was to safeguard policyholders, retirees, and working families,” Mike Causey says.
The fallout didn’t stop with the verdicts. Causey said policyholders at Lindberg-linked life insurers continue to feel the damage. Financial security was put at risk, and the effects remain unresolved.
A pardon, he warned, wouldn’t fix any of it. It would send a signal that money and persistence can outweigh accountability.
Lindberg was convicted of attempting to bribe Causey to remove a Department of Insurance official who had flagged financial irregularities, including the diversion of insurer reserves to support Lindberg’s other businesses.
An appeals court overturned the first conviction on faulty jury instructions, but a jury convicted him again in 2024. He hasn’t been re-sentenced yet, as courts review potential restitution across multiple cases.
Late in 2024, Lindberg also pleaded guilty to $2 bn in fraud in a related prosecution. That fact sits in the background now. Quiet. Unanswered.
